Apple Cannot Fulfill Demand for Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Screen.

While sales of Macintosh personal computers were not exactly high last quarter, Apple still could not fulfill the demand for its latest MacBook Pro 15" notebook with Retina screen. The company does not reveal what was the reason why the availability of the new MacBook Pro 15" did not meet customers' expectations.

"The MacBook Pro with the Retina display was incredibly well received and we ended the quarter in backlog; we still have not caught up with demand yet, but anticipate doing so next month," said Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple, during conference call with financial analysts.

The reasons why Apple could not meet the demand for its MacBook Pro 15" with Retina screen are unclear. Given the fact that Apple can get enough Retina-class screens for its iPhone and iPad devices, it is hard to imagine that the company could not obtain enough 15" screens for its latest MacBook Pro. Still, given the fact that the new MBP adopts completely new system architecture with SSD storage, new type of display and new type of unibody case, manufacturing problems are likely to occur to the laptop.

The MacBook Pro 15" with Retina display features the latest Intel Core i7 quad-core processors up to 2.7GHz with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.7GHz, Nvidia GeForce GT 650M discrete graphics with 1GB of GDDR5 memory, up to 16GB of DDR3L 1600MHz memory and flash storage up to 768GB. Two Thunderbolt and two USB 3.0 ports allow pro users to connect to multiple displays and high performance devices, and a new HDMI port offers quick connectivity to HDTVs. The MacBook Pro delivers up to 7 hours of wireless productivity and also features a FaceTime HD camera, glass multi-touch trackpad, full-size backlit keyboard, dual microphones, enhanced speakers, 3-stream 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 as well as a thin MagSafe 2 power port.

Separately, Apple announced citing data from NPD Group that its notebooks now account for 25% unit market share and 47% of dollar market share of portable PCs sold in the U.S.

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I don't own any Apple laptop, but you gotta admit the construction quality and the screen are unmatched on the PC. The weight is also just 4.5 lbs for a 15 inch laptop with the best laptop screen in the world!

The inability to easily upgrade the SSD and complete inability to upgrade the RAM are a terrible money grab. However, for the entire PC industry this should be a nice kick in the pants to encourage them to start moving towards higher quality LED panels, with higher resolutions.

Also, keep in mind that Apple laptops have amazing resale value. So even if you buy this for $2,200, 12 months later you can sell it easily for $1,700. The same cannot be said of any $2000+ Windows laptop. The total cost of ownership per year is actually less than a windows PC, which is why the initial entry price isn't as bad as you think when you end up upgrading.

Personally, I think 15 inch laptops are an awkward size. 13 inch is much better for portability and 17-18 inch is a lot better on a desk as a desktop replacement. I want to see what they do with the 13-inch macbook pro retina display - maybe it'll be $500 less.

High resale value is also the reason that it's not any more expensive to buy Intel processors. When you resell them, you get a much higher price than on AMD processors, which means the total cash outlay over the time of ownership is not any greater than owning the cheaper AMD system. Since a lot of Apple users like to upgrade to the latest and greatest, the resale value definitely is very important in this consideration and is also one of the main reasons why the high prices aren't really "expensive" in the actual cost of ownership calculation (this also applies to iPhone vs. Android phones).

If only I could buy a $2,000+ Windows laptop with the same build quality, screen, weight and high resale value, I'd be 100% in because I hate iOS.